If this isn't rock bottom, we can at least see it from here

The door to sports hell was once only partially unbolted. Now, Mann-dora's Box is full throttle open.

Manny Ramirez and others have grabbed the baton once held by Terrell Owens and taken it to an entirely new level of turd-dom and insanity.

We once looked at sports as a sanctuary from a world full of crazy people. Now, the sports world is certifiably crazy.

Thanks to Manny, Favre and Artest, we won't forget this week -- no matter how much we want to. (Getty Images)

It just gets nuttier every year.

When have you ever seen three teams in the span of just days try so hard to dump their best players, three Hall of Famers, in Ramirez, Brett Favre and Ken Griffey?

If you're a sports fan, this was one of the more shocking -- and possibly unnerving -- few days you've ever seen.

The Green Bay Packers offer $20 million to Favre to stay retired? Trent Dilfer would have accepted for half that amount.

Think about that for a moment. Twenty million bones to not play football. Where do you get a job like that?

Ron Artest continued his buffoonery by bragging about how he's ghetto.

A woman sports television journalist was basically called a tramp by an insecure male writer.

There's reportedly a sex tape involving a professional coach.

Randy Moss owns a Truck Series team. Randy Freaking Moss.

Chris Henry is suspended. Well, actually, that's not so unusual after all.

Cycling and track have become so over-the-top corrupt, it's difficult to believe anything you see. Seven Russian female track stars were suspended one week before the Olympics for tampering with their urine samples. The dead giveaway to investigators was that the women all sounded like Barry White.

Craziness on top of lunacy.

I understand some of this nonsense has happened in the past. Owens behaved so petulantly, he forced the Philadelphia Eagles to trade him. Athletes have been arrested before. They've been selfish, arrogant, aloof and drugged up. Roger that. Got it.

But you know the lock on Mann-dora's Box has been removed when Artest is acting as a spokesman for the ghetto.

"Leave me out of this Ron," the ghetto responded in a statement.

All of this makes you wonder: When will sanity be restored? Or is this beginning of something worse to come? Will leagues ever regain control of their players?

The difference now is players and franchises increasingly seem to have no shame. The Packers tried to bribe Favre not to play and in the process turned the quarterback into a martyr.

Ramirez avoids hustling the way vampires avoid sunlight and yet, in his upside down, empty vessel of a cranium, he is the one who's being disrespected. Jeremy Shockey behaved like a 5-year-old before the New York Giants sent him packing.

This isn't to say there aren't good guys in sports. There are plenty. It's just that maybe we've reached a tipping point where the bad guys are starting to outnumber the decent ones.

"The Red Sox don't deserve a player like me," Ramirez said before he was traded to Los Angeles. "During my years (in Boston) I've seen how they have mistreated other great players when they didn't want them to try to turn the fans against them."

No mention of personal responsibility or contriteness for his behavior. We all make mistakes, but Ramirez is almost Bill Clinton-like in his ability to deflect blame.

There may never be a week or so in sports like this past one, not unless three Hall of Famers change teams in such a short span and the recent overall lunacy is equaled.

Ramirez was napping when he got the news of the trade.

What a perfect, cogent image that was for these times.